Dead Man Walking

by J F Straker

  Like the envelope, the letter was typewritten. But it was signed with Jess Wheeler’s characteristic scrawl.

  Dry-mouthed, he went into the sitting-room and perched on the edge of a chair to read the note again. How could she do this to him? Within his means — even beyond his means — he had given her so much. He knew that often it had not been enough by her standards, but it had never occurred to him that she might leave him. And to go now, when the tide of comparative poverty had turned and they could have done so much together! ... Why had she done it?

  Despair turned to anger as he thought of Wheeler. It was Wheeler who had flattered and cajoled her into this. Not because he loved her — no-one could love her as he, Mark, loved her — but because of the money. Wheeler had not been content with his own share. If that paragraph meant what it said, they were taking the lot. They were leaving him without a penny.

  He screwed the note into a ball and flung it at the empty grate. Consumed with a frustrated urge for action, he yet knew that action was pointless. Whatever he did, wherever he went, he would be too late. Beryl was gone, and the money with her. He could hope to recover neither.

  Seconds later he was knocking at the neighbour’s front door.

  It was some time before the woman answered. She was in her dressing-gown, and peered round the door suspiciously before opening it wide.

  “Well, really, Mr Sinclair!” Her voice was as inimical as her expression. “What a time to call! I was just going to bed.”

  He was too agitated for more than a brief apology.

  “My wife, Mrs Bute. She’s not at home, and I’m worried. I wondered if you —”

  “Went out an hour ago,” she told him. “Someone called for her in a car.”

  “You wouldn’t know who, I suppose?”

  “I would not. Your wife didn’t stop to introduce him. Just ran out of the house and away.” Her voice softened as she saw the agony in his eyes. “I’ve seen him here before. A dark man in a yellow jersey. And he was driving one of those Minis. A red one.”

  He thanked her and left. Out on the pavement he hesitated. He could not face the solitude of the house, and he started walking towards the lights of the town centre. At first he walked slowly, with no purpose other than to keep moving. But presently his pace quickened. Because of his defeat he had not stayed on at the pub after the darts match; he had come home earlier than usual. What if they had not hurried, expecting him to be later? An hour ago, Mrs Bute had said. But an hour was not long. They might have stopped for petrol, perhaps even for a drink or a snack to celebrate. And it would take time to collect the money.

  He broke into a run.

  The Corner Garage was closed. But light shone from the windows of the flat above, and after he had banged on the heavy steel doors for some time a sash went up and a man’s head leaned out to peer down at him.

  “What the hell —!”

  “It’s me, Charlie. Mark. Let me in, will you?”

  Charlie Goodwin did not argue. He withdrew his head and closed the window. Moments later there came the rattle of a chain, the sound of bolts being withdrawn. The steel doors screeched open on their runners.

  Sinclair slipped through, helped to close them again. Unused to exercise, he was breathing heavily.

  “Trouble?” Charlie Goodwin asked. He sounded anxious.

  “Not the way you’re thinking.”

  Standing in the dimly lit garage, Sinclair told him what had happened. And Goodwin listened, the expression on his pink face gradually lightening. Of medium height, he was heavily built: massive shoulders, bull neck, strong hands, broad thighs. Women found the combination of virile male body and boyish face irresistible.

  “You poor bastard,” he said. “They’ve done you good and proper. But what do you want from me?”

  “A car. Just for tonight. Beryl’s taken mine.”

  No. That wasn’t true. They had gone in Wheeler’s Cooper. So where was the Morris? Had it been stolen, as he had at first surmised?

  Goodwin waved a hand round the garage. “Help yourself,” he said.

  Sinclair helped himself to a Morris van; he was not an expert driver, and he preferred the familiar. The town was deserted, and he drove fast, hands over-tight on the wheel. Once open country was reached he pushed the old van to the limit, screeching round bends, feeling the front wheels judder frantically on the rough surface of the lanes. He had never driven so recklessly before. But then he had never before had so little regard for his own safety. Nothing now mattered but speed.

  Arrived at his destination, he parked the car on the verge, climbed the stile, and set off at a run up the wooded rise. There had once been a path; now it was overgrown and blanketed by dead leaves, and the trees obscured what little light the night contained. Too late he realized that he should have borrowed a torch from Charlie. But he knew the general direction, and he hurried on, heedless of the brambles that tore at his trousers or the occasional low branch that whipped his face and threatened to dislodge his spectacles. And presently he came to the clearing.

  The building that stood there had once been a private chapel. Now it was a ruin. The walls still stood, but of the roof only the rafters remained, and the floorboards had either rotted away or been taken for firewood. Even in daylight it was a gloomy place, with the undergrowth reaching right to the walls, the long grass and bracken that had replaced the floor, the encircling trees. At night it was eerily sombre.

  It was not until he started to mount the broken steps that he realized he was too late. There had been no other car in the lane when he parked the van. They had come and gone.

  He paused, shivering with sudden cold. The dark void of the entrance loomed before him, but now there was no inducement to enter. There had been little enough inducement in the past; he had never liked the place, had never understood the queer fascination it held for Beryl. They had come on it by accident soon after they were married, and during those early years, when things had been — well, not good, but better between them — they had sometimes picnicked there. At Beryl’s wish, not his. It was different, she said. Something you wouldn’t find anywhere else. It was — well, different.

  Then they had ceased coming. Not from a sudden aversion in Beryl, but because they had ceased picnicking together, as they had ceased doing many things together. Until early that morning, when she had said, with a decisiveness that surprised him, “The chapel. That’s the place.”

  He was still on the steps when the light came on: a strong, direct beam that lit on his stomach and lifted quickly to his face. Blinded, he shielded his eyes.

  “You’ve been a hell of a time getting here,” a voice said from behind the beam. “What kept you?”

  7

  “A reversal of the customary procedure, I grant you,” Sherrey said. “If anyone strips it is usually the woman. But why should it concern us?”

  Johnny didn’t know the answer to that. It was just a feeling he had, born of the odd circumstances of the accident and the impression that the woman’s face was familiar. As they drove back to the hotel the impression had strengthened, and he had cudgelled his brains in a vain attempt to remember where he might have seen her before. She was still on his mind when he bade Karen goodnight. Karen had suggested a nightcap in her room, a suggestion he would normally have seized on with alacrity. But when Johnny had a problem he had a problem. His refusal, the abruptness with which he left her, had both astonished and piqued the girl. She was unused to such cavalier treatment from her escorts.

  “It’s the woman, sir,” he said earnestly. “I’m convinced I’ve seen her before.” He smacked his forehead. “If only I could remember where.”

  Sherrey sighed. He half lay, half sat on his bed, jacket and tie discarded. It was late, and he had had a long and tiring day. But he knew Johnny in this mood, and he resigned himself to argument.

  “Rumour has it that girls are your hobby,” he said wearily. “Think back through the collection.”

  Johnny was
unabashed. “There haven’t been that many, sir. And it wasn’t Wheeler’s wife. I checked with Karen — er — Miss Moore. She didn’t see the body, of course, but her description of Mrs Wheeler is way out.”

  “Was she young? Attractive?”

  Johnny frowned. “It’s hard to say. Unless it’s someone you know a stiff is — well, just a stiff. Impersonal. Difficult to assess. But I’d put her in the early thirties. And reasonably attractive.”

  He had been pacing restlessly about the room. Sherrey said, “For the love of Mike, man, sit down! It makes me weary just to watch you.”

  Johnny sat down. He said, “I’m told Wheeler played away from home occasionally. She could be one of his fixtures. But what made him strip? She didn’t.”

  “Deviationists, perhaps.” Sherrey sipped at the whisky and milk that was his nightcap. “They happen. But drop it, Johnny, will you? It’s not our pigeon. Just tell me about Whisper, and then let’s both get some sleep.”

  Johnny told him. He also told him of the new-found affluence of the Franks family. Neither item of news greatly surprised the superintendent. If Whisper Pratt was indeed innocent — which had yet to be proved — then the job had been done by one of his pupils; the similarity in technique was too marked to be coincidental. As for the Franks — “Someone’s taking care of them,” he said. “And not from any altruistic motive, either. Hitherto I’ve rather frowned on the theory that these jobs are the work of one big, well-organized gang. Now I’m not so sure. After all, it’s in the natural order of things: brains at the top, muscle below, and the administrative arteries in between. It happened in the States. It could be happening here.”

  “It’s certainly well organized,” Johnny agreed. “The narks know nothing, nobody’s turned copper. But if it’s a really big firm, wouldn’t some of the smaller fry have grassed by now?”

  “Their families would suffer if they did. They know that. And they know what would happen to them when they’ve done their bird.”

  Johnny wasn’t convinced. But he sensed that the Boozer would not welcome further argument at that hour, and he said cheerfully, “What’s Knickers been up to?”

  The superintendent frowned.

  “You can take that smirk off your face, Johnny.” He was “Johnny” in private but never in public. And not in front of Nicodemus. Nicodemus, Sherrey suspected, would disapprove of such familiarity. “Knickers, as you call him, is a sound, hard-working copper. While you’ve been calling on old friends in London he’s been knocking on doors. And a hell of a lot of doors at that.”

  Johnny grinned. “Hot plates, eh?”

  “And nothing to show for them. Either no-one saw or heard anything, or they just don’t want to know.”

  “What do we do about Whisper, sir?”

  “I nicked him once. Did you know that?” Johnny nodded. “He’d be doing bird right now if his pals hadn’t perjured themselves on his behalf. Him — and several others.” Sherrey drank the last of his nightcap. “Which is another reason to suppose there’s a big firm behind this lot. Even bent types don’t commit perjury for kicks. They have to be paid or intimidated, and little men like Wheeler couldn’t do either. All those professedly disinterested witnesses —” He broke off. “What’s biting you now?”

  “That’s it, sir!” Johnny said excitedly. “That’s where I saw the woman. In the witness-box.” An agonized expression came over his freckled face as he struggled to recall the name. “Wallace? No — Willis. Daphne Willis. Or was it Deirdre? I’m sure it began with a D.”

  The superintendent shuddered.

  “It couldn’t have been anything as simple as Doris, I suppose?” he said.

  TUESDAY

  1

  JUDITH WHEELER had been told of her husband’s death the same night, but because of her distress and the fact that identity was not in dispute she had not been asked to view the body. That, the police had told her sympathetically, could wait until the following morning.

  She was still distressed the next morning. Johnny was at the police station when she arrived, and his heart went out to her. She had paid no heed to her toilet. Her dark brown hair hung limp and unbrushed about the thin face, her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen; there were ugly blotches on the pale cheeks, and as she walked it seemed that her legs could barely carry the frail body. Johnny wondered what it must be like for a young woman to lose her husband so early in life. The only bereavement he had suffered had been that of his father. But although he had grieved deeply at the time, it had not disorganized his life as Jess Wheeler’s death must have disorganized his wife’s. Looking at her now, he suspected that Judith Wheeler would be even more lost than most women.

  Chief Inspector Cole took her to see the body, then brought her back to his office and gave her a cup of tea, which she left untouched. “It’s her husband, all right,” he told Sherrey. “Not that there was any doubt. Oddly enough, it didn’t appear to upset her. No more than she’s upset already, that is. She even agreed to look at the woman.”

  “And?”

  “She didn’t recognize her. All she said was that it wasn’t Beryl, as she’d expected.”

  “Who is Beryl?”

  “Some woman with whom her husband had apparently been having an affair. Beryl Sinclair. I know Mark Sinclair, the husband. Runs a bookshop in Market Square. A mild, inoffensive little man. I’m not surprised his wife looked elsewhere for excitement.”

  Although not bursting with friendliness, the chief inspector was in a less hostile mood. Sherrey welcomed the change. There was no reason to believe that either the dead woman or her companion had had any connection with the bank robbery; but Johnny’s insistence that he had seen the woman in the witness-box — he still could not be certain where or when — had aroused a mild interest in the superintendent. It gave the incident a special flavour. And he was short on flavours that morning.

  “Mind if I have a word with her?” he asked genially. Noting the look of suspicion that appeared immediately on the chief inspector’s face, he was quick to explain. “I’m not trying to meddle, Mr Cole. But Sergeant Inch has an idea that the dead woman was connected with a previous case he was on.”

  “Really?” The suspicion was still there. “So what does that give you?”

  “Nothing, I suspect. But it’s some sort of thread, however tenuous. And faute de mieux —” He shrugged. “Of course, if you’ve any objections —”

  The chief inspector said coldly that he had none.

  Judith Wheeler answered their questions listlessly, but the tears had ceased. She sat fiddling with a loose coat button, not looking at them. Occasionally she shook her head and brushed the hair from her eyes, and Johnny saw that the fingernails of her left hand were bitten down to the quick.

  It took time and patience to get answers, and sometimes the questions had to be repeated or explained; her brain seemed to have been numbed by the disaster which had overtaken her. Her husband, they learned, had been a plumber by trade. But two years previously he had come into a little money, and had bought their present house and land, intending to grow early vegetables under glass and breed Alsatians. Neither venture had been particularly successful, she thought. But somehow they had managed.

  “Tell us about yesterday, Mrs Wheeler,” Sherrey said.

  “Yesterday?” She looked at him vaguely.

  “Yesterday,” he repeated. “What happened?”

  Jess had been away for the weekend, she said, but had returned early in the morning, before she and the children were up; she had come downstairs to find him cooking breakfast. He had gone out again after lunch, and a little later the stranger had called. His visit had upset her, and the rest of the afternoon was vague in her mind. Around dusk Jess had returned, and ...

  “One moment, please,” Sherrey interrupted. “What did this stranger want?”

  “Something about Jess not turning up at a party Saturday night.”

  “And that upset you? Why?”

  “He said Jess had pr
omised to — to take his wife. He said —”

  She broke down at the memory of what the man had said. It was an automatic reaction, an echo of her distress of the previous afternoon. It did not last long. She remembered that what the man had said was no longer important, since it could not now affect her. What concerned her now was the terrible nightmare of insecurity. Beside that everything, even the tragic manner of Jess’s death, paled into insignificance.

  Recovering, she told them what the man had said.

  “And your husband denied it. Did you believe him?” Sherrey asked.

  That too was unimportant. She had been too confused the previous evening to analyse her emotions. Now she did not care.

  “I don’t know,” she said. The button came away in her hand, and she stared at it blankly before dropping it into a pocket. “I don’t know.”

  “Did he say where he’d been for the weekend?”

  She shook her head. Two or three times a year he would go off like that, she said, ostensibly on business. She never questioned him.

  “And this telephone call that took him out last night. Did he tell you who made it?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve no idea, I suppose, how he came to be in his underpants when the accident happened?”

  “Of course not.” For the first time during the interview apathy left her. She sounded almost scornful. “How should I? When he left home he was wearing flannel trousers and a yellow jersey. He wore that jersey a lot. It was his favourite. And don’t ask me who the woman was, because I don’t know. I’ve never seen her before.”

  “Did you recognize the raincoat?”

  Apathy once more took over. She shook her head. Hair fell into her eyes and mouth, and she pushed it wearily away.